


Dance Around the Fire

by Tokyo_the_Glaive



Series: 21 Days of Darcy Lewis Crossovers and AUs Challenge [2]
Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-23
Updated: 2015-06-23
Packaged: 2018-04-05 19:04:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4191444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tokyo_the_Glaive/pseuds/Tokyo_the_Glaive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>S.H.I.E.L.D. sends Jane and Darcy to England to get them out of the way.  Darcy's all set for a quiet time full of mad science and bad food.  Nothing could have prepared her for Roxy Morton.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dance Around the Fire

**Author's Note:**

> I'm debating coming back to this and adding in Wingman!Eggsy, but for now, this is it :)
> 
> Prompt is from Day 2 of the AU challenge: “you’re my next door neighbor and you walk your dog for like 2 hours every day in our adjoining backyards and at first I was annoyed bc trespassing much??? but you’re really cute and you dance and sing along badly to music the whole time so I sit on the back porch and watch you for a little bit" Neighbors!AU

So far, England was _not_ agreeing with Darcy Lewis.  The food was terrible, the weather was awful, and her and Jane’s next-door-neighbor was a bona fide lunatic.  At least, that was Darcy’s best explanation.  Jane wasn’t interested enough to theorize about it, so Darcy was left to come to her own conclusions.  

When Darcy had relocated to England with Jane—S.H.I.E.L.D. insisted that they were needed for “consultation” work, but they’d heard that story enough times to know that it was bogus—she hadn’t had any real expectations.  She liked the BBC well enough, but she’d seen enough English-people-are-passive-aggressive-and-perpetually-angry memes to last her several lifetimes, so she had decided to clear her expectations and roll with whatever she found.

What she found was next to nothing.  The house S.H.I.E.L.D. put Darcy and Jane up in was close to only one other building and little else.  Darcy and Jane would drive to get food that they didn’t like from locals who didn’t like them, and whenever they weren’t taking astrophysical observations in hopes of finding another anomaly, there was little do to.  Early on, Darcy had tried to go visit their “neighbors” and found that it was some kind of military training facility.  A bald man in an ugly cardigan and enormous glasses had kindly asked her to leave, but not before she got an eyeful of Roxy Morton.

Nothing had quite prepared her for Roxy Morton.

* * *

After dinner on the day Darcy trespassed, Roxy came knocking.  Jane was on the roof taking readings, but Darcy hadn’t gone to join her yet and so answered the door.

“Hello,” Roxy had said.  “Are you our new neighbor?”

“One of them, yeah,” Darcy had said, stuck on the fact that a supermodel appeared to have landed on her front porch.  “I’m Darcy Lewis.”

“Roxy Morton,” Roxy said.  She stuck out a hand, and Darcy tentatively shook it.  Roxy’s grip was quite firm.  “I saw you earlier.”

“Yeah, uh, I just swung by to say hello,” Darcy said, switching her weight.  The embarrassment of being escorted off of the premises of the neighboring property still hadn’t worn off.  “My boss and I are alone out here, and… I didn’t know.”

Roxy’s smile was brilliant.  “Oh, don’t mind them,” she said.  “They’re not a bad bunch.”

Darcy didn’t know what to say, so her mother’s etiquette training kicked in.  “Do you want to come inside for coffee?  Or, you know, tea.”

Roxy laughed.  “I’m afraid I can’t, sorry,” she said, “though I’d love to.  I’m actually breaking curfew at the moment.”

“You have a curfew?” Darcy asked before she could shut herself up.

“Just for now,” Roxy said.  “Part of the training.”

“What are you training for?”

Roxy looked like she was about to answer, then thought better of it.  “It’s a secret, I’m afraid.”

Darcy nodded.  “Classified stuff, huh.”

“Something like that.”

“Well, I’ll tell Jane you stopped by,” Darcy said.  “She’ll be sorry to have missed you, but she gets kind of caught up in her research.”

“Jane?” Roxy asked.  “Your boss?”

“Sure,” Darcy said.  “Jane Foster.”

Roxy had started to pull away from the door, but now she stopped, her eyebrows in her hair.  “Dr. Foster?” she asked.  “Of Foster Theory?  Einstein-Rosen Bridges?”

“The very one,” Darcy said.  “I’m her assistant.”

“Why would a candidate for a Nobel prize come out here?” Roxy asked.

Darcy pasted the biggest grin she could muster onto her face and said, “Classified stuff.”

Roxy’s deep laughter stayed with Darcy for the rest of the night.

* * *

Beyond that encounter, Darcy had hardly spoken to Roxy, but she saw the other woman often.  At some point, Roxy had got herself a black poodle.  Darcy had figured out early on that Roxy was athletic, but she hadn’t known just how well the woman could _run_.  Roxy’s dog was vivacious and perpetually full of energy, and Roxy ran her for hours every evening.

Darcy knew this because most of the running occurred in her backyard, well within view of the back porch.

Jane asked Darcy about it the first time Roxy came onto the property with her dog.  “Does she know we’re here?”

“Yeah,” Darcy said.

“They have a _huge_ property,” Jane said, watching Roxy alternate between sprinting and jogging, chasing after her dog.  “Why is she here?”

“I don’t know,” Darcy admitted, and it was strange.  Whatever boot camp S.H.I.E.L.D. had set them up next to, Jane was right to call it huge, and there was no way that Roxy had more or even better space in Darcy’s backyard than there.

“She’s singing,” Jane noted, gesturing at the exuberantly twisting form of Roxy Morton.  Darcy watched Roxy double back on her tracks, doing a little spin in the air as she turned.  She had in earbuds, but she was belting the lyrics to a song, and Darcy could hear them clearly.

“Renegades,” Darcy said.  Jane gave her a blank look.  “X Ambassadors?  Come on, Jane.  We need to get you some good music.”

Jane shook her head and moved to go back inside.  “I’ll settle for a good book instead.”

“No, you’ll settle for sleep,” Darcy called, settling herself into the rocking chair on the back porch that she’d determined was hers.  “You were up all night and all of yesterday.  Go to bed.”

“I’m not tired.  I’ve just got a few more calculations—”

“ _Sleep_.”

Darcy heard a muted curse that meant that she’d won.  With a smile to herself, she turned her attention back to Roxy.  She was less running and more dancing, shaking and hopping in time to the music.  After a long moment, she recognized a very out-of-tune “No Light, No Light” by Florence + The Machine.

Pulling her knees up to her chest, Darcy fiddled absently with her phone, going back and forth between checking the internet and watching Roxy Morton make an absolute, lovable fool of herself in Darcy’s own back yard.

* * *

Roxy’s antics, as Jane termed them, went on for weeks.  Jane tried talking to Roxy and politely asked her to stay out of their yard, but Roxy kept coming back, and Jane ultimately gave up.  Darcy made it a habit to sit on the back porch every evening around the time Roxy liked to take her runs, and Roxy never failed to disappoint.  Her poodle grew bigger every week, and it bounded after her like the excitable, confused animal it was.  Half of the time, Darcy was tempted to join Roxy in her evening revels, but she remained in her chair, reading and studying and passing the time until Jane called her to do tests on the sky.

One day, Roxy didn’t show up.

“Finally,” Jane said as she stepped onto the back porch.  Darcy had been staring at an empty yard for the past two hours.  “Did you tell her to go away?”

“She never came,” Darcy said, eyeing the empty space.  “I wonder if she’s feeling all right.”

“We can check on her tomorrow,” Jane said, distracted.  “Come on, tonight’s supposed to be perfect for observing.”

“Good,” Darcy said, without feeling.  She took a backwards glance at the backyard and wondered where Roxy had gotten to.

* * *

The next morning, Darcy woke up to a text from an unknown number: _“Lock the doors, and if you have one of Valentine’s SIM cards, destroy it.—Roxy M.”_

Darcy didn’t know what to think.  She didn’t know who Valentine was or why this person would have given her a SIM card, but Jane was asleep after getting worked up over an observation that she couldn’t quite explain to Darcy before she crashed, so locking the doors was an easy enough thing to do.

S.H.I.E.L.D. contacted Jane a few hours later to give the same information.  Something about the SIM cards was driving people insane, and they wanted to keep Jane and Darcy as safe as possible.  Darcy was scared, but not scared enough to wake Jane, who was still asleep.  If anything terrible happened, at least Jane would be well-rested.  If anything, she wondered why Roxy had given her the information first, and where she was that she might have learned about it so quickly.  The thought made Darcy queasy, and she forced herself to sleep, too.

* * *

At the end of the week and against all odds in Darcy’s mind, Roxy came back.  Darcy was more relieved than she could bear admitting.  She’d been anxious and terrified to even think of the other woman, and each passing day had put an uneasy assurance in Darcy’s mind—that Roxy was dead, taken down by some lunatic with a madness-inducing cell phone.

When she saw Roxy dancing like mad not fifty feet from the back porch, Darcy ran at her and tackled her with the strongest hug she could muster.  Roxy’s poodle bounced around them both, unsure of what was going on but ecstatic nonetheless.

“Where were you?” Darcy demanded without letting go.  Roxy was strong, and through Darcy had run at her with everything she had, Roxy had held them both up almost effortlessly.

“Darcy!” Roxy exclaimed.  “You’re looking well!”

“ _Where were you?_ ” Darcy demanded again.  “I was so worried!  You had me terrified, texting me like that.  I had no idea what you were talking about, or how you got my number, and then I saw all of those horrible things on TV, and—”

“Slow down,” Roxy said.  “Everything’s fine.”

“No, it’s not!  The world tried to tear itself to pieces!” Darcy cried.  She realized that she was clinging onto Roxy, but she didn’t care.  “I know what happened because they told us, but Roxy, where _were_ you?  I thought you were dead, or worse…”

To her credit, Roxy didn’t ask any questions.  She just held Darcy close.  “I’m sorry,” she said.  “I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you I was leaving.”

“You can’t just vanish like that,” Darcy said, burying her face in Roxy’s shoulder.  The poodle had sat down as if aware that this was not a moment to be interrupted.  “It’s rude.”

Roxy chuckled and Darcy could feel it shake through her whole frame.  “Well, I’m sorry.  I’ll make it up to you.  But I am glad that you’re well.  I was worried about you, too.”

Darcy leaned against Roxy.  The birds were singing, and crickets were chirping, and had Roxy’s jacket not smelled like gunpowder, Darcy might have been able to forget all of the news clips that she’d seen.

“You helped stop it, didn’t you?” Darcy mumbled into Roxy’s shirt.

“That’s classified,” Roxy said softly.

“If you wanted it to stay classified, you should have said ‘no’,” Darcy shot back with no real venom.

Roxy rested her head on Darcy’s and rocked her from side to side.  “You’re right,” Roxy said simply.  “Whatever I did, though, classified or no, kept you safe, so I can’t complain.”

“Neither can I,” Darcy said.  “You know, I was just working up the courage to come out here when you disappeared.”

“What?”

Darcy pulled away and straightened her glasses.  She was aware that she looked like a blubbering mess, but Roxy looked like a model fresh off of the runway.  A model, Darcy reminded herself, with gunpowder on her jacket.

“I’ve been watching you out here,” Darcy said.  “When you run and dance.  I was going to join you— Er, I thought you knew I was here.”

Roxy grinned.  “I knew.  I was sad when you didn’t join me, actually.  I was hoping you would.”

“Is that why you’ve been trespassing?” Darcy joked.  “To lure me out to go dancing?”

Roxy looked to one side.  “Part of it,” she answered honestly.  “I was hoping to catch your eye.”  Roxy smiled for a moment, then started.  Darcy recognized the expression right away: Darcy had felt it on her own face whenever something slipped out of her mouth that absolutely should not have been said.

“Wait, Roxy?” Darcy asked.

“Look at the time,” Roxy said, speaking quickly.  She glanced at a wrist unadorned by a watch.  “I really ought to be getting back—”

“Roxy,” Darcy said, grasping Roxy’s wrist lightly.

“Yes?” Roxy said.  It might have been a trick of the light, but Darcy thought that her cheeks were faintly pink.

Darcy said, “Any time you want to stop by, and not just for dancing, feel free.”  She smiled.  “I’d love to spend some time with you.”

Roxy opened her mouth, closed it, then said, “May I be forward?”

“Sure,” Darcy said.

Roxy took a step and kissed Darcy soundly on the lips.

“I would love to take you up on your offer,” Roxy proclaimed.  “Eggsy—my friend—he told me I had to be more forward, show you how I felt, but I wasn’t sure, and if this isn’t all right—”

Darcy responded by pulling Roxy back in for another kiss.  “I’ve got a feeling you saved the world,” she said when she pulled back.  “This is _very_ all right.”

If Jane found them ten minutes later, Roxy’s hands around Darcy’s waist, Darcy’s tangled in Roxy’s otherwise perfect hair, she didn’t speak of it.


End file.
